| At State of the Union, Trump declines to shake hands with Pelosi Posted: 04 Feb 2020 06:35 PM PST  President Trump declined to shake hands with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at Tuesday night's State of the Union Address, which came less than two months before Democrats in the same House chamber voted to impeach him.
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| Iowa caucus: News pundit caught calling Democrat event 'effing disaster' on hot mic Posted: 04 Feb 2020 03:37 PM PST  An MSNBC pundit was caught on air expressing that the Iowa caucus had turned into an "effing disaster" Monday night.The moment was captured in a clip widely spread around social media on Tuesday. In the video, a male voice can be heard over the voice of another MSNBC presenter as they give an update on the caucus.
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| A plane had to turn around and fly 1,000 miles back home because a man on board claimed to have caught the Wuhan coronavirus Posted: 05 Feb 2020 09:10 AM PST  James Potok, 28, announced mid-flight on Monday that he had contracted the deadly virus. A medical team determined he had made it up.
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| Doomsday author Chad Daybell claims his deceased wife helped him 'reconnect' with new wife Lori Vallow Posted: 04 Feb 2020 01:39 PM PST  Weeks after his first wife died, Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow were married. He credits his deceased wife for helping him find a new one.
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| DA Says Couple Accused of Drugging and Raping Up to 1,000 Women Did No Such Thing—Ex-DA Made it All Up Posted: 04 Feb 2020 06:51 PM PST  A California prosecutor is dropping all charges against a doctor and his girlfriend, alleging that his predecessor "manufactured" allegations that the couple drugged and sexually assaulted up to 1,000 women.The stunning turn of events comes a year and a half after the case against Grant Robicheaux, an orthopedic surgeon who appeared on the TV show The Online Dating Rituals of the American Male, and substitute teacher Cerissa Riley exploded into the headlines.At the time, Orange County's then-district attorney, Tony Rackauckas, claimed the pair lured women to their Newport Beach home, knocked them unconscious, and raped them.At a press conference in September 2018, he said investigators had seized "hundreds" of incriminating videos from the couple's phones. Asked whether the number could be as a high as a thousand, Rackauckas said, "I think so."A few months later, though, Rackauckas was out of office, replaced by current DA Todd Spitzer, who eventually ordered a review of the evidence. He says he was appalled by what he found."The prior District Attorney and his chief of staff manufactured this case and repeatedly misstated the evidence to lead the public and vulnerable women to believe that these two individuals plied up to 1,000 women with drugs and alcohol in order to sexually assault them—and videotape the assaults," Spitzer said in a blistering statement."As a result of the complete case review I ordered beginning in July, we now know that there was not a single video or photograph depicting an unconscious or incapacitated woman being sexually assaulted."Rackauckas has not responded to his former rival's allegations. But Robicheaux's attorney praised the reversal."I don't want to be overly dramatic or hyperbolic, but the mere filing of this case has destroyed irreparably two lives," defense lawyer Philip Cohen told reporters."He has become persona non grata with an entire city, an entire state—and I don't want to be exaggerating—but probably an entire country."Robicheaux, 39, and Riley, 32, insisted from the start that all their liaisons were consensual. They were swingers, their attorneys argued, and the so-called victims were willing participants.They claimed Rackauckas inflated the allegations, hoping that media attention would buoy his re-election effort. And last June, unsealed transcripts of a deposition showed the ex-prosecutor thought the publicity would help him.Spitzer said that's when he assembled a team to re-evaluate the case. "A team of prosecutors with a combined 175 years of experience determined there is no provable evidence that Robicheaux and Riley committed any sexual offense," he said in a press release.The charges that will be dropped include kidnapping and rape; Robicheaux and Riley would have faced up to life in prison if convicted.At least some of the women who accused Robicheaux and Riley maintain they were assaulted.Michael Fell, an attorney for one of them, told the Los Angeles Times the decision is a betrayal of his client."For somebody to report, for them to go through what she had to go through with the police, for the district attorney's office to file criminal charges, for her to have to be patient the last two years while the case is being prosecuted, only for it to be dropped—she's going to be devastated," Fell said.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Canada and China both "furious" in row triggered by Huawei arrest - Canadian envoy Posted: 05 Feb 2020 04:50 PM PST ![Canada and China both "furious" in row triggered by Huawei arrest - Canadian envoy]( "Canada and China both \"furious\" in row triggered by Huawei arrest - Canadian envoy") Canada and China are both "furious" over the case of a Huawei executive detained in Canada in 2018 and its aftermath, but there are signs the two sides can hold constructive talks, the Canadian ambassador to Beijing said on Wednesday. Canadian police picked up Huawei Technologies Co Ltd chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. arrest warrant in December 2018, after which China arrested two Canadian citizens on security charges and blocked imports of canola seed. Barton was appointed Canada's envoy to China in September 2019.
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| Republican lawmakers pan FBI Director Wray’s response to FISA abuses Posted: 05 Feb 2020 03:24 PM PST  They said the response to the Justice Department's watchdog report on the process concerning Carter Page was grossly inadequate.
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| White Wisconsin lawmaker drops Black History Month proposal Posted: 04 Feb 2020 11:49 AM PST ![White Wisconsin lawmaker drops Black History Month proposal]( "White Wisconsin lawmaker drops Black History Month proposal") State Rep. Scott Allen, a Waukesha Republican, said in a statement that "it is possible that I made incorrect assumptions." He said he would instead like to co-sponsor a separate resolution that black lawmakers authored. "The proposed resolution concentrated on the character of individuals involved in an important effort in American and Black history, the operation of the Underground Railroad," Allen said. The Wisconsin Legislature has traditionally recognized Black History Month, which runs through February, with a resolution in both the Assembly and Senate.
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| Watch: Pelosi tears Trump State of the Union speech in half Posted: 04 Feb 2020 07:59 PM PST  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacted to Donald Trump's combative State of the Union Speech Tuesday by tearing her copy of it in half after the president concluded his remarks.
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| Kobe Bryant: 911 calls from helicopter crash released Posted: 03 Feb 2020 08:17 PM PST  Tragic 911 calls from the day of Kobe Bryant's helicopter crash in Calabasas have been released.Audio transcripts reveal how residents of the exclusive neighbourhood called in to report a helicopter vanishing from the sky and the fiery wreckage on the ground.
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| A county in China is offering people $140 to tell on neighbors who have visited Wuhan, and another is threatening the death penalty to anyone deliberately spreading the coronavirus Posted: 04 Feb 2020 04:33 AM PST  China has been struggling to contain the coronavirus epidemic, which initially broke out in the central province of Hubei.
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| Modi vows 'grand' Hindu temple at flashpoint site Posted: 04 Feb 2020 04:18 PM PST  The construction of a grand Hindu temple at holy site bitterly contested with Muslims moved a step closer Wednesday when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said a trust had been finalised to oversee the project. The razing of a mosque at Ayodhya by a huge crowd of Hindu zealots almost 30 years ago unleashed some of the country's worst sectarian violence since independence, with more than 2,000 people killed. After a decades-long legal battle, India's highest court ruled in November that the land in northern India should be managed by a trust to oversee the construction of a temple.
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| In unreleased Iowa poll, Sanders finishes 1st, Biden 4th Posted: 04 Feb 2020 06:32 AM PST  Remember that final poll of Iowa Democrats from CNN and the Des Moines Register that wasn't released because of an interviewing error? Well, FiveThirtyEight reportedly confirmed the final results. It would've been good news for Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who led the pack with 22 percent and 18 percent, respectively. That falls in line with an earlier report that media outlets increased their coverage of Warren after glimpsing the numbers.
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| Bat Soup, Anyone? How Viruses Transfer From Animals To Humans Posted: 05 Feb 2020 03:15 AM PST  Stop eating bat soup.
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| California Needs Housing — and Won’t Get It Posted: 05 Feb 2020 03:30 AM PST  Anyone wondering how sclerotic and ungovernable California has become need look no further than the failure last week of an incredibly modest attempt to reform the state's archaic housing regulations.California is in the midst of an enormous crisis of affordable housing. The median home price in the state now exceeds $500,000, while the median rent for a two‐bedroom apartment tops $1,800 per month, nearly 55 percent higher than the national median. In cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, average rent exceeds $2,500 per month. Less than a third of Californians can afford the median house cost, while more than half face rents that economists consider unaffordable as a portion of their incomes.The high cost of housing is largely a function of high demand and low supply. Estimates show that California needs 3.5 million housing units by 2025 just to meet current needs. Yet the state has the nation's second-lowest rate of housing starts.The lack of affordable housing has led to an explosion of homelessness. There are an estimated 130,000 homeless people in the state, including around 28,000 in the San Francisco Bay Area and 60,000 in Los Angeles County alone. But even often overlooked cities such as San Diego have homeless populations in excess of 8,000. By some calculations, more than 47 percent of all unhoused homeless people in America reside in California.While many of California's homeless suffer from drug, alcohol, and mental-health problems, many more are driven to the streets by the cost of housing. By some estimates, as much as two-thirds of the state's homeless problem can be traced to housing costs.Last week California lawmakers had the opportunity to take the tiniest of baby steps toward dealing with the crisis. The Housing Accountability Act, SB50, would have allowed the construction of multi-family housing in some neighborhoods near mass transit that were previously zoned exclusively for single-family housing. They failed.It is important to understand that this bill was already the weakest of weak teas, especially after it went through many changes. In a state where 50 to 75 percent of residential property is zoned single-family only, it would have opened up barely anything. And it would have done almost nothing to deal with the suffocating weight of environmental, labor, and other regulations that have driven up construction costs. For example, environmental laws alone have driven up prices by nearly 10 percent, and prevailing-wage laws are estimated to raise median housing costs by $42,900 to $79,000. Still, it was a recognition of reality: The only way to deal with a housing shortage is to build more housing.But even this minimal step was rejected by many state legislators and special interests. Caught between a coalition of anti-growth environmentalists and wealthy NIMBYs, pro-housing legislators could not overcome the power of the status quo. After all, the homeless and the poor, who suffer most from high housing costs, are a lot less likely to vote than those who want to keep low-income housing out of their neighborhood.Pro-housing legislators have vowed to keep up the fight, but unless Californians begin to face up to the basic laws of economics -- such as supply and demand -- the future of the Golden State looks grim.
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| Russia says alarmed by U.S. deployment of low-yield nuclear missiles Posted: 05 Feb 2020 07:47 AM PST  Russia is alarmed by the U.S. Navy's decision to deploy low-yield nuclear missiles on submarines since they heighten the risk of a limited nuclear war, a Russian official said on Wednesday. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the deployment of the W76-2 warhead in the name of strengthening deterrence had caused Russia great concern over U.S. nuclear strategy, Russian news agencies reported. The U.S. Defense Department said on Tuesday the Navy had fielded a low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, something the Pentagon says is needed to deter adversaries like Russia.
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| 1 dead, 157 injured in Istanbul after jet has 'rough landing' in rainy weather Posted: 05 Feb 2020 08:44 AM PST  Officials said a plane broke into three pieces after it slammed into a runway at Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen Airport while attempting to land on Wednesday evening. The crash landing happened amid rainy and windy weather.Turkey's Transport Minister Mehmet Cahit Turhan referred to the incident as a "rough landing," according to Reuters.One fatality was confirmed on Wednesday night with several others in intensive care, according to the Associated Press. Rescue members and firefighters work after a plane skidded off the runway at Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen Airport, Istanbul, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2020. A plane skidded off the runway Wednesday at Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen Airport, crashing into a field and breaking into pieces. Passengers were seen evacuating through cracks in the plane and authorities said at least 21 people were injured. (DHA via AP) Instanbul Gov. Ali Yerlikaya tweeted that there were 175 passengers on board, including two babies, and six crew members. He said the Provincial Health Directorate confirmed 157 injuries - and that the injured passengers were taken to 18 different hospitals.The New York Times reported that Turkish news media footage showed passengers climbing out of the wreckage and onto the plane's wing. Rescue members work after a plane skidded off the runway at Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen Airport, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2020. A plane skidded off the runway Wednesday at Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen Airport, crashing into a field and breaking into pieces. Passengers were seen evacuating through cracks in the plane and authorities said at least 21 people were injured. (AP Photo) The cause of the crash is unclear at this time, but unsettled weather was present at the airport at time of the incident. According to FlightRadar24, the plane landed at 6:19 p.m. local time."Rain and thunderstorms moved across the area from 5:20 p.m. to 7 p.m. local time," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Eric Leister said."A wind gust near 40 mph (65 km/h) was reported at the airport at 6:20 p.m. local time," Leister added. This was right around the time that the plane crashed at the airport.The plane was attempting to land in strong tailwinds, the same winds that had forced two other previous flights to delay landing, according to Turkish news media via Reuters.Visibility was around 4.5 miles with clouds around 5,000 feet above the ground, Leister said, adding that "temperatures were well above freezing in the area [at the time of the crash]."The airport was closed for a time immediately following the crash and flights were diverted to other airports."Showers will continue across the area into Thursday morning and may mix with snow before ending on Thursday," Leister said.
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| How Iowa's caucus disaster softened Biden's loss and marred Warren's overperformance Posted: 05 Feb 2020 08:11 AM PST  The Iowa caucuses may as well have happened under a rock.With its 41 delegates making up just a percentage of the total delegate pool out there, Iowa gets an outsized reputation in the presidential primary process simply because it comes first. But with the full results of its caucuses still unrevealed 36 hours later, the often candidacy-ending state has lost most of its power.Things didn't look good for former Vice President Joe Biden before the Iowa caucuses began, with state polls showing him far from the runaway frontrunner status he once claimed. The first chunk of results from Iowa backed that up: With 71 percent of precincts reporting, he was in a solid fourth place and could expect no delegates. But Biden didn't have to address that fact during his caucus night speech, even though he dropped out when he came in fifth place in Iowa when he was running in 2008.Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has never held on to a top polling spot for long. And yet she outperformed those polls Monday night, wrangling at least five of the 27 delegates that have been decided so far with 18 percent of the vote. Again, she lost out on the opportunity to spin those votes into a positive speech on Monday night, and joined the other candidates in quickly scooting off to New Hampshire for the next round.And as for former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, well, he declared victory Monday night despite the current caucus count showing him tied with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Another 30 percent of results are still missing, and they could tip the scales in truly any direction.More stories from theweek.com Trump just won the Iowa Democratic caucuses Should financial markets be freaked out by coronavirus? America is doing so much better than you think
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| Impeachment done, Pelosi unburdens herself about Trump Posted: 05 Feb 2020 01:37 PM PST  President Donald Trump was gone, the House lights were dimming, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looked up to her friends and family in the gallery overhead. The moment showcased Pelosi's sharper, less-restrained approach to the nation's 45th president at the bitter end of the impeachment saga she led.
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| More than 3,700 people are trapped on a cruise ship near Japan after 10 of them tested positive for the coronavirus. These are the steps Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Cruise Line are taking to protect passengers from it. Posted: 05 Feb 2020 08:25 AM PST  Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean International, and Norwegian Cruise Line have taken a number of steps in response to the Wuhan coronavirus.
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| U.S. cities and states with confirmed coronavirus cases Posted: 05 Feb 2020 02:59 AM PST  Six states are currently treating people infected with coronavirus.
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| A Catholic Polish midwife who delivered 3,000 babies at Auschwitz remembered 75 years after camp's liberation Posted: 05 Feb 2020 08:11 AM PST  An estimated 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz. That included newborns who were killed by drowning or lethal injection.
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| Man arrested on capital murder charge in fatal shooting of two women in Texas campus dormitory Posted: 04 Feb 2020 06:37 PM PST  A man was arrested Tuesday in connection with a double murder that police say appeared to target his ex-girlfriend in a campus dormitory.
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| James Carville Rages Over State of Democratic Party: ‘I’m Scared to Death!’ Posted: 04 Feb 2020 06:12 PM PST  Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville sounded the alarm bells on Tuesday night over what he described as the Democratic Party turning into an "ideological cult," specifically singling out would-be presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.In the wake of Monday night's chaotic Iowa Democratic caucus that featured delayed vote results due to a faulty app, Carville appeared on MSNBC to warn that regardless of the final tallies, the Dems appear to be in big trouble."The polling averages have not been very good the last 10 days," he sighed. "And I've seen some pretty good polls that show enthusiasm among Democrats is not as high as we would like it. So there's something as people are watching this process that is concerning."Saying the party needs to "wake up and make sure that we talk about things that are relevant to people," the former Clinton adviser grumbled that he is "not very impressed" with the Democratic field and suggested DNC chair Tom Perez should be canned.After complaining that the campaigns "have to be more relevant," Carville—who is backing longshot presidential hopeful Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO)— was asked if he would get behind Sanders if the progressive senator ended up getting the nomination."Well, I'll get behind him. I have no choice," an unenthused Carville replied. "But look at the British Labour Party. We're like talking about people voting from jail cells. We're talking about not having a border. I mean, come on, people."He continued to rail against Sanders' policy positions, describing the independent Vermont lawmaker as being for "open borders" and stressing that he doesn't want the "Democratic Party of the United States to be the Labour Party of the United Kingdom," something he's told The Daily Beast before.Carville would go on to exclaim that Democrats need to be more concerned about taking power back in Washington, repeatedly stating that only 18 percent of the population controls 52 Senate seats. "It matters who the candidate is, it matters what a party chooses to talk about!" Carville shouted. "I'm 75 years old. Why am I here doing this? Because I am scared to death, that's why! Let's get relevant here, people, for sure.""I just love you," former Democratic senator and current MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill cooed in response.Carville, meanwhile, went on to make his case that the party was leaning towards a centrist candidate over a liberal one, wondering out loud: "Do we want to be an ideological cult? Or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to have the majority party?""You and I know that 18 percent of the country elects 52 senators," he continued, addressing McCaskill. "The urban core is not gonna get it done. What we need is power! Do you understand? That's what this is about."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| 'Australia Should Be Ashamed' After More Than 40 Koalas Killed on Logging Site Posted: 04 Feb 2020 12:57 PM PST  30 koalas were euthanized after being found injured among the felled trees
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| When it comes to climate hypocrisy, Canada's leaders have reached a new low Posted: 05 Feb 2020 02:30 AM PST  A territory that has 0.5% of the Earth's population plans to use up nearly a third of the planet's remaining carbon budget Americans elected Donald Trump, who insisted climate change was a hoax – so it's no surprise that since taking office he's been all-in for the fossil fuel industry. There's no sense despairing; the energy is better spent fighting to remove him from office.Canada, on the other hand, elected a government that believes the climate crisis is real and dangerous – and with good reason, since the nation's Arctic territories give it a front-row seat to the fastest warming on Earth. Yet the country's leaders seem likely in the next few weeks to approve a vast new tar sands mine which will pour carbon into the atmosphere through the 2060s. They know – yet they can't bring themselves to act on the knowledge. Now that is cause for despair.The Teck mine would be the biggest tar sands mine yet: 113 square miles of petroleum mining, located just 16 miles from the border of Wood Buffalo national park. A federal panel approved the mine despite conceding that it would likely be harmful to the environment and to the land culture of Indigenous people. These giant tar sands mines (easily visible on Google Earth) are already among the biggest scars humans have ever carved on the planet's surface. But Canadian authorities ruled that the mine was nonetheless in the "public interest".Here's how Justin Trudeau, recently re-elected as Canada's prime minister, put it in a speech to cheering Texas oilmen a couple of years ago: "No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there." That is to say, Canada, which is 0.5% of the planet's population, plans to use up nearly a third of the planet's remaining carbon budget. Ottawa hides all this behind a series of pledges about "net-zero emissions by 2050" and so on, but they are empty promises. In the here-and-now they can't rein themselves in. There's oil in the ground and it must come out.This is painfully hard to watch because it comes as the planet has supposedly reached a turning point. A series of remarkable young people (including Canadians such as Autumn Peltier) have captured the imagination of people around the world; scientists have issued ever sterner warnings; and the images of climate destruction show up in every newspaper. Canadians can see the Australian blazes on television; they should bring back memories of the devastating forest fires that forced the evacuation of Fort McMurray, in the heart of the tar sands complex, less than four years ago.The only rational response would be to immediately stop the expansion of new fossil fuel projects. It's true that we can't get off oil and gas immediately; for the moment, oil wells continue to pump. But the Teck Frontier proposal is predicated on the idea that we'll still need vast quantities of oil in 2066, when Greta Thunberg is about to hit retirement age. If an alcoholic assured you he was taking his condition very seriously, but also laying in a 40-year store of bourbon, you'd be entitled to doubt his sincerity, or at least to note his confusion. Oil has addled the Canadian ability to do basic math: more does not equal less, and 2066 is not any time soon. An emergency means you act now.In fairness, Canada has company here. For every territory making a sincere effort to kick fossil fuels (California, Scotland) there are other capitals just as paralyzed as Ottawa. Australia's fires creep ever closer to the seat of government in Canberra, yet the prime minister, Scott Morrison, can't seem to imagine any future for his nation other than mining more coal. Australia and Canada are both rich nations, their people highly educated, but they seem unable to control the zombie momentum of fossil fuels.There's obviously something hideous about watching the Trumps and the Putins of the world gleefully shred our future. But it's disturbing in a different way to watch leaders pretend to care – a kind of gaslighting that can reduce you to numb nihilism. Trudeau, for all his charms, doesn't get to have it both ways: if you can't bring yourself to stop a brand-new tar sands mine then you're not a climate leader. * Bill McKibben is an author and Schumann distinguished scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College, Vermont. His most recent book is Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
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| Trump Jr shares bogus legal interpretation that Nancy Pelosi broke law by tearing up SOTU speech Posted: 05 Feb 2020 12:20 PM PST  Donald Trump Jr has lent his name and voice to a bogus interpretation of US law that has been used to argue that Nancy Pelosi could be removed from office for tearing up her copy of the president's State of the Union speech.The supposed legal interpretation that her destruction of the document is a crime punishable with jail time was seen online shortly after Ms Pelosi's dramatic move, and promoted by figures like the leader of the far-right group Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk.
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| Elon Musk is getting closer to a massive payday — here's how he could become Jeff Bezos-level wealthy Posted: 04 Feb 2020 09:30 AM PST  If Tesla achieves its extremely ambitious goals, Musk would own a huge share of a $650 billion company.
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| Ten more on cruise ship off Japan have new coronavirus Posted: 05 Feb 2020 05:09 PM PST  Ten more people on a cruise ship off Japan's coast have tested positive for the new coronavirus, the health minister said Thursday, raising the number of infections detected on the boat to 20. Japanese authorities have tested 273 people among the approximately 3,700 passengers and crew on the ship after a man who got off the boat last month in Hong Kong was diagnosed with the new strain. "Now we have 71 more test results, of which 10 are positive for the new coronavirus," he added.
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| Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer says he expects to leave Iowa 'with momentum' Posted: 04 Feb 2020 07:52 AM PST  Democratic presidential contender Tom Steyer on Monday said he expected to leave Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses "with momentum" that carries him later this month to Nevada and South Carolina, where he has shown more strength in opinion polls.
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| The Kurdish Tragedy: What America Can Learn From Its Foreign Policy Fumbles in Iraq Posted: 05 Feb 2020 10:12 AM PST  As bitter of a pill it is to swallow in watching a good and reliable partner fall under the thumb of hostile actors, policymakers and foreign policy experts can avoid future calamities by developing realistic and deliberative long-term strategies that support America's diplomats and armed forces serving as the instruments of that policy.
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| Warrants served in 1996 disappearance of California student Posted: 05 Feb 2020 09:14 AM PST  Authorities served search warrants Wednesday at locations in California and Washington state in the investigation of the disappearance of college student Kristin Smart in 1996. Smart, who attended California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, vanished while returning from a party in the central coast city.
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| Trump's acquittal means there is no bottom Posted: 05 Feb 2020 01:16 PM PST  Late Wednesday afternoon, the Senate voted mostly along party lines to acquit President Donald Trump on the two articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives in December. By refusing to call witnesses, the Republican majority abdicated its responsibility under the Constitution to carefully or even cursorily consider the evidence before them, permanently tainting the proceedings. More consequentially, Republicans have fully embraced disgraceful and extraordinarily dangerous arguments about the president's essentially unlimited powers. The Senate majority's decision to legitimize, again, President Trump's lawless efforts to undermine U.S. elections places the country at the very precipice of democratic collapse, with only the November general election standing between us and slow-motion authoritarianism.The threat to the future of democracy feels more tangible than at any time since the immediate aftermath of Trump's shocking 2016 election victory. The hope at the time was that our institutions might save us. But one by one, they have proven incapable of resisting the president's loud and relentless siege. The Supreme Court, whose majority now includes two crucial Trump appointees, has largely rubber-stamped the president's power grabs. Robert Mueller, a man who embodied The Institutions and their supposed disinterested and magical authority, could not be bothered even to make a recommendation about the president's fate, and his investigation into Russia's 2016 election interference and Trump's obstruction of justice was tossed aside. The Attorney General and his Department of Justice have both become unabashed accomplices to the Trump administration's extralegal ambitions.The implications of this assault are already obvious. The president can't be indicted or brought to justice while in office. He may obstruct justice without limits. He can't be impeached during an election year. He can't commit impeachable offenses in the pursuit of his office because he believes his re-election to be so important to the country's future as to supersede all other considerations. He can't be impeached for an abuse of power because it's not technically a crime, and the Department of Justice is no longer interested in investigating his crimes anyway. The only way to get rid of him is to beat him in an election he is openly undermining. The logic is circular and leads back to where it started: total impunity, endorsed enthusiastically by one of America's two political parties, who correctly perceive this warped system of circular authority as their only way of clinging to power.From the beginning of the Ukraine scandal, Republicans have mostly advanced bad faith arguments because they are incapable of defending the president's conduct as it actually unfolded. Hence the comical claims that the president's phone call with Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky was "perfect" and the lurid allegations about Hunter Biden, which they know to be baseless, and the Orwellian contention that President Trump ordered military aid to the country withheld due to concerns about "corruption." But these lies — what else can they be called? — at least had the virtue of pretending that there was something that the president could do to justify removal from office. That fiction was dispelled over the past week, as the hallucinatory conspiracy-mongering that was the House GOP's strategy fell apart in two different ways.First, the president's lawyers claimed, among other things, that because President Trump believes his re-election is in the national interest, it somehow exempts his conduct from legal ramifications. After a longwinded introduction in which he argued that the architects of the Constitution did not intend for abuse of power to be an impeachable offense, Alan Dershowitz made a set of remarkable claims. "Presidents often have mixed motives that include partisan personal benefits along with the national interest," he claimed. President Trump believes that his re-election is in the national interest, and therefore the partisan motivation in his quest to have Ukraine fabricate investigations into the leading Democratic contender for the nomination can be waved away.The trouble is with Dershowitz's contention that Trump had a "mixed motive," because it suggests there was some underlying policy goal behind the whole escapade. To illustrate the point, Dershowitz gives us a thought experiment. "Let's assume a Democratic president tells Israel that foreign aid authorized by Congress will not be sent or an Oval Office meeting will not be scheduled unless the Israelis stop building settlements. Quid pro quo." Yet in this example there is a goal that can be construed as both in the U.S. national interest and in the re-election prospects for that hypothetical president. With Trump, there was no policy goal, and Republicans have failed to make any kind of remotely convincing case that there was. Bipartisan majorities favor what is ostensibly the American policy of providing military aid to protect Ukraine from further Russian aggression.Withholding the aid therefore had nothing to do with a "policy dispute" and everything to do with the president's personal interest. We know that because the aid was released without the investigations Trump was demanding of Zelenksy through his cabal of half-wit conspirators. They didn't achieve a policy goal, they got caught. The only matter of any importance to Trump or anyone in his sordid orbit was the 2020 election and the desire to enlist Zelenksy in an effort to sabotage it. That's not a mixed motive. It's pure corruption, laced with cynicism and the exercise of brute power utterly unmoored from even a cursory examination of our national interests. The idea that the Founders would not object to this behavior is beyond parody.The second way that the House GOP's Burisma fairy tale fell apart was that several prominent Republican senators admitted that the president did everything he was accused of doing but that they just couldn't be bothered voting for removal. "It was wrong for President Trump to mention former Vice President Biden on that phone call, and it was wrong for him ask a foreign country to investigate a political rival," said Sen. Susan Collins. Others went further.Sen. Marco Rubio: "Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a president from office." In other words, the president committed impeachable offenses, but in the opinion of Marco Rubio, it would be bad for the country to bring him to justice.Sen. Lamar Alexander: "There is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven."Sen. Lisa Murkowski: "The president's behavior was shameful and wrong. His personal interests do not take precedent over those of this great nation."All of the people making these statements voted to acquit.Maybe Rubio and Murkowski and all of the tsk-tsking moderates and opportunists really believe that removing President Trump would plunge the country into some kind of partisan pandemonium that would tear us asunder. But their choice instead is to throw us to the wolves, to protect President Trump and Republican power over and above any other competing principle, knowing full well that Trump himself openly harbors authoritarian ambitions.It's my hope, said Murkowski on the Senate floor Tuesday, "that we finally found bottom here." I hope she can one day see the irony — her vote, in fact, will enable Trump to continue digging. Unless he is stopped, there can be no bottom, because his lack of principle and decency is total. That leaves the November elections themselves, already hobbled in their own legitimacy by the Electoral College's majority-warping mechanisms and the Supreme Court's repeated endorsements of voter suppression and now laid bare to whatever immoral or illegal assaults the president and his allies wish to mount on them, as the final redoubt of institutional defense against a corrupt madman and a political party willing to do anything to preserve the power of a dying majority.What precisely these awful people would do with another four years is anyone's guess. But they would leave American democracy gravely, perhaps irreparably damaged. Democrats fighting over the minutiae of Iowa delegate allocation procedures need to unify quickly around whoever wins their nominating contests, so that we can focus on defeating this dire threat to the country with the seriousness of purpose that it demands.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com Trump just won the Iowa Democratic caucuses Should financial markets be freaked out by coronavirus? America is doing so much better than you think
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| Baby tests positive for coronavirus 30 hours after birth Posted: 05 Feb 2020 03:00 AM PST  The mother tested positive for coronavirus when she was pregnant, said doctors in Wuhan, China.
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| Bodies of two U.S. firefighters killed in Australia sent home Posted: 05 Feb 2020 12:35 AM PST  The bodies of two U.S. firefighters killed battling Australian blazes were sent home on Wednesday in emotional ceremonies attended by officials and relatives. Mourners gathered on the tarmac at Sydney Airport to see off Captain Ian H. McBeth, 44, of Great Falls, Montana, and First Officer Paul Clyde Hudson, 42, of Buckeye, Arizona, as their flag-draped caskets were lifted into aircraft for the journey home. The men and a third American, flight engineer Rick A. DeMorgan Jr, 43, of Navarre, Florida, were killed in a plane crash in remote bushland while battling fires on Jan. 23, in one of the deadliest days of Australia's most destructive bushfire season in a generation.
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| Joe Biden flopped in Iowa. And so did the Democratic party's reputation Posted: 04 Feb 2020 12:00 AM PST  The apparent malfunctioning of a new app, meant to transmit vote totals, threw the Iowa caucus in disarray. And this benefited some more than others If you're the type of person who thinks the Democratic party is a creaking, incompetent entity whose leadership needs overthrowing, the Iowa caucuses certainly validated your point of view. None of us knew who would win, but we had at least expected a result. We didn't get one, at least not on caucus night. State Democratic party officials announced that due to "quality control" issues, release of the result would be indefinitely delayed. On a conference call with representatives of the candidates, party officials hung up the phone when asked when the totals would be released.So what do we know? Well, one thing we can say confidently is that "frontrunner" Joe Biden flopped. There were places where Biden didn't even meet the 15% threshold needed to maintain viability from the first round to the second round – at one caucus site, the attorney general of Iowa had to switch from Biden to Buttigieg when Biden was disqualified. It explains why Biden's surrogate John Kerry was heard on the phone the other day asking whether it would be possible for him to enter the race at the last minute to save the Democratic party from being conquered by Sanders.Internal numbers released by the Sanders campaign, showing results from 40% of caucus sites, showed Sanders winning with approximately 30% of the vote, Pete Buttigieg coming in second with 25%, Elizabeth Warren third with 21%, and Joe Biden a very distant fourth with 12%. If those numbers match the ultimate totals, they are great for Sanders and absolutely horrific for Biden. Sanders will have kicked the crap out of the frontrunner, Barack Obama's former vice-president and the man most favored to win the nomination. It would be a stunning upset.But Biden caught a lucky break. With the party not releasing the actual result, his campaign sent a letter demanding that the result be suppressed until such time as the "quality control issues" were resolved. If it takes long enough to get the official count, Biden may hope that Iowa is old news, or that the issues surrounding the caucus are discussed far more than the actual result. (That's one reason we need to make sure we don't get bogged down too much in talking about the procedural issues rather than the actual outcome.)So what went wrong? It's still not quite clear, though there were reports that a special app used to transmit vote totals had malfunctioned. Questions were immediately raised about who built the app and how it had been deployed. Ironically, it was introduced in order to "get results out to the public quicker" and had been "hastily put together" over the last two months. There had been security concerns from the start, and when NPR questioned the state party chairman, he "declined to provide more details about which company or companies designed the app, or about what specific measures have been put in place to guarantee the system's security". Ironically, it was apparently developed by a firm literally called "Shadow", partly funded by the Pete Buttigieg campaign.If you're a Sanders supporter, you have reason to be suspicious. We had already seen the Des Moines Register suppress the results of its "gold standard" poll on the eve of the election, after a complaint from Buttigieg. And with 0% of caucus results in, Buttigieg declared himself "victorious", praising the "incredible result" and saying Iowa had "shocked the nation". The only thing that had shocked the nation at this point was Iowa's total inability to perform the relatively simple task of counting people's votes. But Buttigieg, good McKinseyite that he is, was getting a head start on deploying the PR spin.For Sanders supporters, being denied a rightful victory in Iowa gives feelings of déjà vu. In 2016, Sanders may well have won Iowa, possibly by a lot, but the state party did not release the vote totals. Instead, it only released delegate numbers, which showed Bernie narrowly losing the state "701-697" to Hillary Clinton. The delegate numbers are calculated strangely (this time around, in one precinct, Sanders beat Buttigieg 111 votes to 47 votes in the "first alignment" but both ended up with two delegates). If the vote totals had been known in 2016, it might have been clear Bernie had won. With his New Hampshire victory shortly after, Clinton would have been seen as losing the race, and the whole election might have turned out differently. That's why, this time around, the Sanders campaign ensured that the vote totals would be released (and took a count of its own for good measure). This time, if he wins, everyone will know … eventually.Despite the chaos, certain aspects of the Iowa caucus were inspiring. For the first time, a caucus was held in a mosque, and hundreds of Muslims and non-Muslims came together to vote for Bernie. In the first caucus of the day, immigrant pork plant workers, whose evening shifts prevented them from joining the main event, came out early to line up for Bernie. Internationally based Iowans caucused around the world, including in Scotland and Tblisi, Georgia. The Iowa caucus might seem like a good illustration of the dysfunction in American democracy, but some of its participatory elements are beautiful. It would be a shame if the lively, communal caucus system disappeared entirely in favor of secret ballots in voting booths, as some were already recommending as the vote-counting mess unfolded.If the Sanders team's count is close to accurate (bear in mind, it was only 40% of caucus sites), he had the night he needed to have. The progressive vote is still being split between Sanders and Warren, but at least Biden hasn't managed to capitalize on that so far. The good news for Sanders is that, even if Buttigieg does unexpectedly well, Mayor Pete is destined to struggle as the campaign moves toward more racially diverse states. But all of the results remain speculative, since the Iowa Democratic party seemed determined to prove that we need a political revolution that overthrows the party establishment. * Nathan Robinson is a Guardian US columnist. He is the editor of Current Affairs
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| The official who led the global fight against SARS called China's quarantine of 50 million people an unprecedented 'grand experiment' that could turn harmful Posted: 04 Feb 2020 07:48 AM PST  China has imposed the largest quarantine in human history by cutting off links to multiple cities in an attempt to stop the Wuhan coronavirus.
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| The controversial YouTuber who faked his girlfriend's death has been arrested on a charge of assault with a weapon Posted: 04 Feb 2020 03:10 PM PST  Jason Ethier, also known as ImJayStation, is expected to appear in court next month. He recently gained attention for faking his girlfriend's death.
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| What is causing the mysterious giant 'ice rings' in Siberia? Posted: 05 Feb 2020 11:05 AM PST  Strange ice rings in Siberia's Lake Baikal have puzzled scientists for decades, but now the mystery apparently has been solved.
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| The Surprising Threat to America (No, Not Russia, China or Iran) Posted: 03 Feb 2020 09:00 PM PST  It comes from within.
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| Man charged with breaking into nursing home, killing patient Posted: 04 Feb 2020 12:55 PM PST  William Hawkins, 47, is charged with first-degree murder for the Jan. 5 slaying of Robert Morell, who was suffocated with a pillow as he slept by an intruder at the Tiffany Hall Nursing & Rehab Center in Port St. Lucie. According to a redacted police arrest report, Hawkins quickly became the prime suspect because he was on Morell's visitor list and matched the description of the man employees saw fleeing the room after being spotted on top of Morell shortly after midnight. Detectives learned that Morell's 57-year-old girlfriend of 15 years had called the nursing home hours before the slaying, telling employees to not let Hawkins into the home because she feared he would hurt Morell.
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| Outrage over Trump giving Rush Limbaugh same medal awarded to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr Posted: 05 Feb 2020 07:55 AM PST  Donald Trump has been roundly condemned by critics for giving the controversial conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh one of the highest civilian awards in the country in the middle of his State of the Union address.Mr Trump announced his decision to award Mr Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during his speech on Tuesday night, having Melania Trump present the medal and place it on the outspoken supporter of the president.
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| Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific asks all staff to take unpaid leave Posted: 05 Feb 2020 12:44 AM PST  Hong Kong's flagship carrier Cathay Pacific is asking its entire workforce to take up to three weeks of unpaid leave, its CEO announced Wednesday, as the airline faces a crisis in the wake of the new coronavirus outbreak. The request lays bare desperate times at Cathay, which was hammered last year by months of political chaos and protests in Hong Kong and is now being further hurt by the fallout from the virus outbreak. In a video message to the company's 27,000 employees, airline boss Augustus Tang said they were being asked to take up to three weeks leave with no pay between March and June.
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| Data suggests virus infections under-reported, exaggerating fatality rate Posted: 05 Feb 2020 02:13 AM PST  Fatalities from the coronavirus epidemic are overwhelmingly concentrated in central China's Wuhan city, which accounts for over 73% of deaths despite having only one-third the number of confirmed infections. In Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease, one person has died for every 23 infections reported. Experts say the discrepancy is mainly due to under-reporting of milder virus cases in Wuhan and other parts of Hubei province that are grappling with shortages in testing equipment and beds.
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| Sanders Holds Solid Lead in New Hampshire Poll: Campaign Update Posted: 05 Feb 2020 02:18 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders holds a comfortable lead before next week's New Hampshire primary with nearly double the support of Pete Buttigieg and is favored in nearly every subgroup, according to a new Emerson College poll.The Vermont senator leads with 32% in the state, followed by the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor with 17%. Former Vice President Joe Biden was next with 13%, trailed by Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts with 11% each. The poll was conducted from February 2-4 and has a margin of error of +/- 4.3 percentage points.Entrepreneur Andrew Yang and Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard both garnered 6%.The results are part of an eight-day continuous poll by Emerson of the first primary state, measuring the bump candidates receive coming out of Iowa. Data for the poll were collected after the Iowa Democratic Party released partial caucus results that found Buttigieg with a slight lead over Sanders.Compared to the poll taken Tuesday, before the partial Iowa results were released, Buttigieg gained 5 percentage points, Warren lost 2, Klobuchar lost 1 and Sanders and Biden were unchanged.Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination but is not taking part in the New Hampshire primary. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. Regardless of who they were supporting, almost 3% of voters surveyed thought he will become the nominee.Biden Adviser Casts Doubt on Iowa Results (4:33 p.m.)A senior adviser to Joe Biden's campaign raised questions about the results of the Iowa caucus, where the former vice president is currently in fourth place.In an interview on CNN Wednesday, senior adviser Symone Sanders pointed to problems with an app used to tabulate precinct results.Pressed by CNN anchor Brianna Keilar over whether this meant she was contesting the reported results, Sanders demurred, saying she has not "analyzed the back ends of the data."When Keilar noted that this was the kind of remark that Democrats have criticized Trump for making, Sanders said she was not disputing the results, just raising "legitimate questions.""I guess we'll have to take the Iowa Democratic Party at their word," she said.Warren Touts Obama Praise in New Ad (12:13 p.m.)Joe Biden's not the only one playing up his ties to Barack Obama.A new 30-second ad from the Elizabeth Warren campaign features the former president praising her as a "janitor's daughter who has become one of the country's fiercest advocates for the middle class."He goes on to point out that she came up with the idea for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, facing "some very tough opposition.""Fortunately, she's very tough," he says.The ad comes from Obama's announcement in the Rose Garden on Sept. 17, 2010 that he was appointing Warren to an advisory position to help create the CFPB. Less than a year later, he passed her over for a position as the agency's first president amid concerns that she couldn't overcome Senate opposition.Obama has not made any public statement yet on candidates in the Democratic primary.Trailing in Iowa, Biden Snags Big Union Nod (10:57 a.m.)Joe Biden won the backing of a major labor union Wednesday, a welcome boost after partial results indicate a disappointing showing in the Iowa caucsues.The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which has 775,000 active and retired members across North America, decribed Biden as "a longtime friend of working families."The endorsement comes at a key moment for Biden's campaign. With about two-thirds of Iowa precincts reporting, the former vice presidnet was sitting in fourth place, behind 38-year-old Pete Buttigieg, self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, another progressive senator."What makes Joe Biden different isn't just his support for our rights on the job, but his support for good energy jobs," IBEW President Lonnie R. Stephenson said in a statement. "Eighty-five percent of IBEW members work in the energy industry, and our country needs a realistic plan to combat the ongoing threat of climate change without putting energy security or working families at risk." -- Kathleen HunterCOMING UPCNN will host town halls featuring eight presidential candidates in New Hampshire on Wednesday and Thursday, and some of the contenders will debate there on Feb. 7.The New Hampshire primary is Feb. 11.Nevada holds its caucuses on Feb. 22, and South Carolina has a primary on Feb. 29.(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Teague Beckwith in Manchester, New Hampshire at rbeckwith3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Kathleen Hunter, Magan CraneFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Wuhan is scrambling to fill 11 sports centers, exhibition halls, and other local venues with over 10,000 beds to create makeshift coronavirus hospitals Posted: 04 Feb 2020 05:42 PM PST  The epicenter of the viral outbreak is converting local facilities into hospitals with over 10,000 beds. See what these makeshift hospitals look like.
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| CNN’s Van Jones worries Trump’s address will win over black voters Posted: 05 Feb 2020 12:24 PM PST  CNN analyst Van Jones warned fellow Democrats on Tuesday that Trump's criminal justice reform policies and prioritization of funding for historically black colleges could win over black voters.
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| Ocean currents are speeding up faster than scientists predicted Posted: 05 Feb 2020 01:01 PM PST  Global ocean currents are speeding up more rapidly than scientists had anticipated — in part due to climate change, per a paper published Wednesday in Science Advances.The trend is "much greater than the natural variability," the paper states. Due largely to faster surface winds, 76 percent of the top 2,000 meters of Earth's oceans show an increase in intensity of circulation, based on data from the past two decades.Surging winds are a predicted symptom of climate change, but such an increase wasn't expected to happen until closer to the end of the century, reports The Washington Post. "This suggests the Earth might actually be more sensitive to climate change than our simulations can currently show," Michael McPhaden, an author of the paper and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher, told the Post.Accelerated ocean currents may affect jet streams, weather patterns, and the amount of heat stored in the ocean's depths, reports Science magazine.While the paper presents a "really huge increase" in acceleration, more research is needed to be certain the quickening is due to climate change, Susan Wijffels, oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told Science magazine. "This paper does highlight how ill prepared we are to truly diagnose what's going on."The paper calls for a more thorough monitoring of global ocean circulation to bring more clarity.More stories from theweek.com Trump just won the Iowa Democratic caucuses Should financial markets be freaked out by coronavirus? America is doing so much better than you think
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